Euthanasia

After an intense public outcry, Las Vegas officials are shying away from plans to kill desert tortoises not adopted or relocated within five days after being found on properties slated for development. Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said Friday he will introduce a resolution at the next Board of Commissioners meeting to scrap the option of euthanizing tortoises. The board is likely to approve the proposal at its Sept. 17 meeting, commissioners said.

Whether she's trysting with her married lover or helping other people die, the title character of "Honey" is a fascinating and complex figure, and Jasmine Trinca inhabits the role with a detached intensity that's thoroughly compelling. The Italian film - the assured feature-directing debut by actress Valeria Golino, still best known to American audiences for "Rain Man" - achieves the rare feat of addressing euthanasia head-on without devolving into a dramatized treatise or a button-pushing issue movie.

On Feb. 6, a baby boy was born, six weeks premature, at Sibley Hospital in Washington. His mother had been hospitalized during her pregnancy twice before--once for dehydration and again for very early labor--and the delivering obstetrician was on the lookout for more trouble. He got it. The baby didn't breathe properly and after a brief examination, he ordered him immediately transferred by ambulance to Georgetown Hospital's high-tech Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. He needed the best of care.

It's an idea that, in the death-squeamish U.S., is probably too disturbing for the edgiest TV hospital drama, let alone real life and real legislation. Last week, the Belgian Parliament passed a law allowing terminally ill children to request aid in dying. Adults there have been able to do that since 2002, and a few other European countries have similar measures. But last Thursday's action, which is expected to be signed into law by King Philippe, will make Belgium the first to extend the right to minors faced with "constant and unbearable suffering.

More than 2,000 French doctors and nurses have signed a petition declaring that they had helped patients suffering from incurable diseases to die and calling for legalized euthanasia. The declaration, published in the weekly Nouvel Observateur, comes days before the trial of a doctor and a nurse charged with administering a fatal dose of potassium to a woman suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer in August 2003.

Legalizing euthanasia would mark a "radical departure from longstanding legal and medical traditions of our country" and would "violate American convictions about human rights and equality," according to the Administrative Committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Mary Alice Altorfer is misdirecting her concerns about nursing home patients like Mary, about whom she expressed her concerns about euthanasia ("It's What's Best for Her, Isn't It?" Commentary, Dec. 28). Her worry about the potential ease by which the Marys of the world might be put away as part of the euthanasia process is valid, but is the wrong concern at this time even with Oregon's recent law potentially allowing highly regulated physician-assisted suicide, not euthanasia, to competent patients.

The World Medical Assn. declared euthanasia unethical in a motion approved during the last week's four-day meeting in Madrid. The association defined euthanasia as the act of deliberately ending the lives of patients, either at their own request or that of their close relatives. The motion stated: "This does not prevent the physician from respecting the will of a patient to allow the natural process of death to follow its course in the terminal phase of sickness."

State health officials accused a Corvallis, Ore., doctor of ordering a lethal injection for a patient against her wishes. The state Board of Medical Examiners filed a complaint accusing Dr. James D. Gallant of engaging in "active euthanasia" and voted 10 to 0 to pursue disciplinary action, the Oregonian newspaper reported. The state board alleged that Clarietta Day, 78, who had a brain hemorrhage, was given a lethal injection of a muscle-relaxing drug without her knowledge or consent.

As one of several dozen Mission Viejo Animal Shelter volunteers, I must respond to the errors in the letter (Aug. 7) from Pepe Michel. The city employees who staff our pro-life shelter are professionals who are dedicated to providing humane care for the animals we shelter. The dozens of trained volunteers who clean cages, feed, bathe, groom and exercise our guests care deeply about animal welfare. We have cared for many unlovely but still lovable animals for many months until the right person came along to adopt them.

The Westminster dog show, at Madison Square Garden in New York, hasn't only been about the dogs lately. Last year, PETA protesters invaded the two-day event. As a handler in one of the fantastically dowdy suits that are a Westminster hallmark trotted a graceful Doberman around the ring, one of the protesters held up a sign reading "Mutts rule. " She was led away by blue-suited security officers, but another protester appeared, smartly dressed in jacket and slacks, and mounted the winners podium to hold up a sign that read "Breeders Kill Shelter Dogs Chances.

Perhaps the only thing more surprising than the news that Belgium allowed the euthanasia of twin brothers who were deaf and going blind is how many commenters appear to favor this event and wish for similar laws in the United States. USA Today and various other sources report that the 45-year-old brothers had been close companions all their lives and lived in the same house. According to a family member, they were distraught at the idea that blindness would rob them of their independence, did not want to live in any kind of assisted-living facility and were horrified by the thought that they would never see each other again -- which would also make communication difficult, at least at first.

I hate to be a party pooper. So I've been eager to join the celebration over "No-Kill December" -- the first time that Los Angeles city animal shelters have managed to go an entire month without euthanizing any adoptable dogs or cats. But I couldn't help worrying that "No-Kill December" would lead to January slaughter. What happened to all those dogs and cats -- 1,000 in a typical December -- the city shelters are forced to put to death every year? There's no way shelter employees could have found homes for all of them.

After more than 50 years as a veterinarian in Burbank, there's nothing small about Martin Small's contribution to Burbank's animal shelter. "I have never done anything more satisfying than what I've done since I've been here," he said. After spending the last several years working full time to establish the shelter's medical program, Small, 82, is now an on-call surgeon. Before he set foot in the shelter in 2004, cats suffered from contagious respiratory diseases and dogs were prone to kennel cough and parvovirus.

A veterinary technician at a Los Angeles city animal shelter was fired last week after officials found that he had subjected dogs to inhumane treatment while euthanizing them. Manuel Boado, 64, was discharged by the city's Civil Service Commission, which concluded that he failed to sedate the dogs he was trying to euthanize, brought dogs into a room with other dead animals and inserted euthanizing needles into jugular veins — a practice officials say was not permitted. With allegations reminiscent of a Stephen King novel, case records open a rare window into the most unpleasant task carried out by the Animal Services Department — killing animals that have no owner when its shelters run out of room.

Last time I wrote about my dad, he'd taken a fall in his bedroom, couldn't get up, but didn't want yet another ride in an ambulance. So my mother got down on the floor with him, pulled up a blanket and they went to sleep. This time they went down together, falling in the street outside a Burger King in the Bay Area town of Pittsburg. He was using a walker with my mom assisting, but he lost his balance and dragged my mother down with him. She was OK, but my dad was hurting. An ambulance happened to be going by, scooped him up and the verdict in the emergency room was a broken hip. For a senior, those two dreaded words — "broken hip" — are often the beginning of the end. Doctors said that without surgery, my father would probably die within three months.

A ground-breaking Oregon law that would let doctors prescribe deadly doses of medication for terminally ill people who want to end their lives was struck down by a federal judge Thursday because it fails to ensure equal protection under the Constitution. The law "withholds from terminally ill citizens the same protections from suicide the majority enjoys," wrote U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan in a 40-page opinion.

An Australian man with prostate cancer has become the first person to die under the world's first law permitting voluntary euthanasia, said Dr. Philip Nitschke, who assisted the man with a lethal dose of barbiturates at the patient's home in Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory region. The patient had terminal cancer and had been ill for a number of years, the doctor said.

India's Supreme Court on Monday laid out guidelines for the use of euthanasia in extreme situations involving terminally ill patients, even as it rejected a plea for its use in the case of a woman who has been in a vegetative state for nearly four decades. With the decision, India joins a handful of nations ? including Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland ? and the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington in allowing some form of euthanasia. India has no law on the issue, making the guidelines legally binding until Parliament passes legislation.

And at the end, all that's left is ash. This week, MTV's "The Hills" will come to a halt, four years and six seasons after it began, badly limping and in need of euthanasia. It's been a mighty fall for a show that, along with its predecessor, " Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County," helped cement the idea of reality TV as soap opera and also stretched the formal boundaries of the genre. This season, though, has been taxing. Every remaining character is minor — someone's friend, someone's girlfriend, and so on. Audrina, once the outcast among the Laguna transplants, is now central, and sidekicks such as Stephanie and Lo have become the meat of this show.